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I’m still hearing from people who moan, groan and jawbone about customer service at Bell Canada. But I think the flood is receding — at least a little.

Bell’s senior management knows it has to improve customer service. This is a corporate priority that will go ahead, no matter what happens with the new ownership. The progress may be imperceptible, but it’s there.

Kevin Crull, president of residential services at Bell, assumed the job of placating me and my readers last year. He made himself accessible at all hours, quick to send emails to customers who felt unloved and unimportant. Since we never met before, I looked forward to our get-together earlier this month at his Bay Street office.

“We have 30 priorities across a $5 billion business. Half are related to elements of service delivery and improvement,” he told me, reflecting his fascination with numbers, measurements and statistics.

Fixing billing is prominent on his list — thank goodness, because that’s the biggest complaint I get from my readers. Many are convinced that Bell overbills everyone a few cents or a few dollars a month just to pad its profits. I’m more inclined to blame incompetence and a multitude of older computer systems that don’t talk to each other.

Because of all the bungling, some people have lost faith in Bell’s integrity. “I don’t doubt we’ve squandered some of that trust,” Crull says at one point. (Later, he asks me not to use the quote. But I don’t let senior executives go off the record after they’ve said something.)

“Another area that gives me hope is that despite what we feel is a consistent burden of complaints, escalations have gone down dramatically,” he says. “In the fourth quarter, escalated complaints were down by 37 per cent. We’re really headed in the right direction.”

This could be a result of better training for call centre staff. If they can resolve things at their level, customers don’t need to ask for a supervisor or manager. Crull points to a fairly new policy that allows customer service reps to “go off the clock” when handling a thorny problem. Their pay and ratings won’t be dragged down by spending too much time with one caller.

He also talks about hiring people with the right DNA. What does this mean? They have empathy and don’t talk like robots. They can solve problems using their own judgment. They can sense when customers are irate and refrain from upselling another product or service.

So, here’s my challenge to Bell. If you’re changing and improving, tell your customers so. And back up the rhetoric with some kind of meaningful guarantee. You know what I mean:

–Wait five minutes on the line for service and get a $5 credit on your bill.

–Complain three times about the same problem and get the next three months’ service free.

–Report two no-shows by a Bell technician and pay nothing for your installation.

How about it, Bell? Are you ready yet to tell the public you’re back in the game? Let’s see you turn those jeers to cheers with a charm campaign.

30 comments

Hot topic and not a happy one for me. I would have contributed to that lower complaint statistic simply because I gave up complaining!

I cancelled a phone feature, which continued to appear on my bill for months. And when it was finally cancelled, I was never reimbursed for the months of unwanted service.

I believe it should be legislated that any business that allows you to sign up for services online should have to make it equally easy and accessible to cancel or downgrade services online, as well. With Bell (and other similar providers), you can sign up for extra phone features online but to cancel, you have to PHONE in. I was on hold over a three day period, waiting, waiting, waiting when I first tried to cancel the service. Ridiculous!

If they believe in their company, they’ll make it as easy for you to get in as get out, online, by phone, or in person. I still want my $60 + tax and interest back and still hate Bell because of the way I was treated when trying to resolve the problem.

I have been unhappy with Bell for a long time. Twenty years ago, Bell intimidated my wife into paying the same bill twice. There was a mix up at the bank with the first payment, which was corrected after she paid the second time. Bell never returned the second payment, despite our repeated efforts.

I still use Bell phone service and until recently had used Sympatico. Cancelling Sympatico was an interesting process. They forced us to wait a month before jumping through a series of hoops that included more phone calls and mailing their equipment back to them.

I see no reason to believe that Bell will ever change. If Bell is forced to deal with enough competition, they are more likely to go out of business than they are to start treating their customers well.

I’ve been a mostly happy Bell customer (phone, internet, mobile for a while but not any more) since I moved to Canada in 2002. But there are a couple of things that don’t inspire confidence:

1. Even though I didn’t renew my mobile phone account with Bell, I still get a monthly email saying that my cellphone bill is ready. The amount of the bill is always zero, so it’s not like I’m being charged for a phone I don’t have, but still it’s irritating to get those monthly bill reminders more than 6 months after I closed my account.

2. Bell’s website for managing your accounts is a joke. Half the time the links don’t work (clicking on “view my bill” brings up error messages more often than not) and I can’t even access my home phone account anymore.

Other than those irritations, though, I have to say I’ve never had any probems with Bell. I believe the horror stories, but fortunately haven’t experienced any of them myself…yet.

Uh Mr. Crull, part of the reason “escalated complaints” are down is, besides customers leaving for other service providers, people like me have given up and will do just about anything to avoid calling your company.

When you finally get through to a human, preferably one that speaks English coherently, you get the same ol’ Bell patented run-around. Actually, that’s incorrect – you get the runaround no matter what the Bell rep’s mastery of English.

Although I’m in the process of transferring my services out of Bell, I agree with Ellen. Put your money where your mouth is. However, I would add that after ONE no-show, your installation is free.

> But I think the flood is receding â€” at least a little.
Yup. It sure has for me. Not just by a little, but by a lot. Perhaps that’s because I’ve managed to transfer several Bell Mobility and Sympatico accounts to the competition. Now just some landlines and my contribution to ameliorating Bell’s Blues will be complete.

> Kevin Crull… made himself accessible
Yup. Crull’s Canadian Call Centre certainly is a lot more effective than the old outsourced ones, be they in Canada or India. I wonder if BCE’s shareholders are getting value from paying Crull and Crew executive salaries and bonuses to do what his front line staff should be doing for a fraction of that cost?

> â€œI donâ€™t doubt weâ€™ve squandered some of that trustâ€
It’s not just billing, Kevin. (Besides, Mobility already used that excuse.) It’s outright lying about contractual terms, speeds, bandwidth, throttling, etc. It’s also about the arrogance of treating your customers as sheep to be fleeced at every opportunity. It’s about praying at the altar of ARPU. And as of last week, it’s now about screwing over your third-party ISPs and their customers in exactly the same way you screwed over those customers when they were still your customers. (You can read all about that in Michael Geist’s column in today’s Star.)

Bell’s got nothing better to do than to continuously sponge off seniors, waste everyone’s time and from your colleague’s article today, provide less internet service than what is paid for (thoroughly documented on CBC’s Marketplace!).

I would also like to add, the drop in escalated complaints could be due to calls getting conveniently dropped and “managers” never being around. We all know that. It’s funny that Crull never mentions total complaints or churn that could account for some of the drop. Oops, it must be bonus time. Bad optics.

Bell’s heavy reliance on you to “see” outstanding complaints speaks volumes of their inabilities, in spite of their multi-million dollar systems. From all the posts, they are brain dead all over.

Whatever happened to the days where we could resolve simple problems before they got out of hand, or when an appointment was something that was kept and that the customer’s family time was respected?

I look forward to the day when the 125 years of “experience” gets wiped out by the smaller, smarter new entrants.

I agree with you, Gone For Good. The problem is (and I discovered this while shopping around) that the “smaller, smarter new entrants” especially in the Toronto area give the impression of being fly by night outfits.

One of them, can’t remember who, must have people answering phones at home, because one of their CSR’s answered the phone in the midst of an argument with her kids – not saying “Hello ABC Company”, just “hello?”

There’s a LOT of money to be made by someone out there who can provide quality service and good customer service.

> Itâ€™s no April Foolâ€™s prank
I know. Somehow the smiley I had at the end of my post didn’t get through.

> recent examples of how seriously Bell treats complaints that come from my readers
Yabbut while you and Crull may be effective, it should never need to get that far, let alone become a routine. Imagine if this was CRA and the Finance Minister had to operate a private support centre from his BlackBerry. What Crull is doing is no different.

> the â€œsmaller, smarter new entrantsâ€ especially in the Toronto area give the impression of being fly by night outfits.
Check out TekSavvy (in Chatham, ON) for DSL Internet and POTS landline. They wholesale the wire between your home and Bell’s central office, then use it provide vastly better service than Bell can for significantly lower cost.

I renewed my Sympatico internet contract in December for another year at the same rate of $24.95/month. They overbilled me the first month, I complained and they credited my account.

When my most recent bill came in last week, I found that they were now charging me $1.80 GST as opposed to the $1.50 that had been charged up to December. When I pointed out to them that in fact the GST had gone down a percentage point in January and the actual amount they should be charging was closer to $1.25, they offered to credit my account for $4. That was after the person at the other end of the line admitted she had no idea what the GST rate was. (Was she in India?)

I wonder how many other people are being billed at an inflated tax rate and aren’t aware because they haven’t checked the details of their bills online?

It seems that Bell Canada either has outdated software, as you mention above, or is overbilling in the name of Revenue Canada, which I would hasten to guess would not be a particularly intelligent scam.

We noticed international collect calls on our phone bill, contacted Bell to check, the CSR wasnt able to provide any details where the calls came from, but gave credit. After few weeks we were surprised to recieve the same bill from another 3rd party, We approached BELL to protest firstly of not providing details of charges, and secondly why they provided our personal information to 3rd party, they declined to answer and insists that we need to talk to the 3rd party company. During this time we met some more Bell customers who got similar fictituous charges which Bell wasnt able to substantiate and ignored their emails. I tried complaining to CCTS in Ottawa in vain, hopefully Ellen can help get this issue resolved not only for me but to all other customers, basically I expect Bell CA to provide details of all charges raised in their bills, and to scrutinize their international partner/s charges before passing on to their customers.

We switched our small business Telephone services to Rogers from Bell because Bell was atleast twice expensive.

Rogers in their offer promised to take care of switching including the billing etc & failed, As Bell continued to debit our account with the preauthorized billing, we made stop payment with our bank ofcourse with an instant debit charges of 12.5$ but that did not stop the payment. We were shocked to know that once you have giving a preauthrized debit to your account, you are completely at the mercy of your service provider, according to the bank there is no way to stop payments unless you close your account. Many innocent customers donot know this and get gouged. Finally after several calls and wasting time we were able to get the payment stopped, According to Bell CSR their system does not allow to cancel the account for some weired reason. When you switch services make sure to cancel your account with current TSP and dont simply believe in false promises of the new company.

Syed and Kay, that’s just the regular Bell service Crull was talking about. But fear not, because he’s got a spreadsheet that says they’re improving customer service by leaps and bounds, so it must be the customers who are lying.

If I were you, I’d get rid of them and give the competition a call.

Ellen, regarding Bell’s notoriety for overcharging, I believe they’re doing it on purpose. They have a team of computer consultants, a huge IT department, database managers that most companies would kill for and a system that tracks millions of calls accurately. So with all that, how can they possibly continue to blame “their systems”? Unless it’s the convenient excuse and a byproduct that is profitable.

Just got another call from “David” in India representing Bell ExpressVu. Apparently I am a “preferred” sucker.

This is only the 12th call in the last 3 months from Bell ExpressVu. I call that criminal and abuse of the (are you ready?) the telephone service provided by Bell. Here’s Bell abusing the very customers who pay their bills and harassing to the level of criminal activity! This is after being told 12 times to “DO NOT CALL”

Now all the “Davids” are told in very clear, colourful language that they should curl up and die, so to speak. When the DO NOT CALL REGISTRY begins and is MANAGED BY BELL do you think BELL will then honour requests to not receive calls from BELL? Don’t bet on it.

If that occurs, I believe we all have a class action case and at the least an individual court action that we will win! Bell and Bell ExpressVu have become scum, plain and simple!

In March 2008, I received a bill from Bell for my home telephone service. I only have home telephone service with Bell, so my usual bill is about $40 per month, everything in. The March bill was for over $200. The reason? A purchase at the Vaughan Mills Bell store for $169, which I never made.

I have spoken to at least 10 different agents over at Bell trying to get this charge off my bill. I sent Ellen the full story, so I’ll spare you the details and what was said, but suffice to say it was absolutely horrendous how useless their call centre reps are, and some of them were just outright rude. They didn’t know anything, they didn’t know what to do, they didn’t know what department handles these cases.

What’s even more funny is trying to understand some of their reps, as almost none could speak any coherent English. I’ve spoken with Indians, Spanish, French (probably their Quebec call centre). I appreciate the fact Bell is such an ethnic company, but I would just say it was a total nightmare.

It is not until I wrote to Kevin Crull’s office that things finally started to be resolved. His assitant Geri called me and said Bell made a mistake: apparently the morons who work at their Vaughan Mills store accidentally made a typing error when entering the account number of the customer who made that purchase for $169. As a result, the charge showed up on my account even though I never made the purchase. On top of that, Bell charged me late fees for that balance because I refused to pay it even though it was in dispute.

I am not a moron..I am a Bell Employee. That would be a moron with his brains kicked out. Proof…read Lior’s Bell nightmare story above.

M-O-R-O-N-S the lot at Bell. They are soon to be surpassed by Rogers and someday will become Rogers dog food. Yup, Bell is out of business just like GM… it’s just they don’t know it yet! MORONS the lot.

Toronto Star Newsflash: GM sales down another 13.5% and dropping. Never thought you’d see the day? Neither did GM. BUT, here we are today in 2008 looking at Oshawa with, to quote a Oshawa GM Worker…”tumble weeds down the streets of Oshawa”.

Bell, this is a predictable outcome with the level of service and attitude you are serving up. The only difference between Bell and GM is the tumbleweed is between the combined ears of Bell management (or rather lack thereof!).

Yup, Rogers will become the new Bell and the old Bell will take the ranks of the also-rans like Eaton’s, Simpson’s, Arthur Andersen, GM, Enron, EDS, AT&T, not enough room here to name all the “Attitude Management Cases”.

Suffice to say Bell you are doomed, oh yes you are…it’s predictable. It really is.

What a joke this executive office is. Why aren’t they getting the files of ALL THE DISSATISFIED CUSTOMERS and personlly helping the others? Why can’t the front line FIX the problems? WHY?

Another SuperHERO able to leap stacks of trouble reports, more powerful than a speeding repairman, look up in the sky? Is it another customer jumping off a building in frustration?

No, it’s SUPER KEVIN. A mild mannered, do-gooder supervisor, but underneath that Armani Suit (you all paid for) is a super human whose only weakness is BCE, the kryptonite of Bell people everywhere. The very thing that brought down the Quebec judgment today, dashing Bell’s stock prices and next the pension deal.

I am a Bell household — cell, home phone, internet and ExpressVu with HDPVR.

The HDPVR packed it in 4 months after I got it. They promised a replacement within 5 business days. It’s now two weeks and counting.

I am so sick and tired of those clowns in India who cannot do a thing about it from there. If somebody in Canada in their customer service department reads this, you are about to lose a Bell household. I will cancel everything.

Just ranting because I need to vent. About 10 days ago, I got a phone call from a Bell salesperson, who pretty much pissed me off from the get go. I hung up on him about 3 times and went up through about 3 levels of supervision throughout the hour and a half conversation.

Eventually we came to an agreement that my bundled services would be about $140/ month and that included an HD PVR, an HD satellite box and a normal digital box for TV, some wireless modem thing that the guy assured me I could connect to my router and online game with and of course telephone service with a long-distance plan.

The salesperson told me the list of channels I would be getting, then told me they will mail me the modem and I should receive it in 5-7 days. Once it got here, I would have to call a number that comes with the modem and a technician would come to change over the phone line and I would get to keep my phone number.

I scheduled the satellite install on the 16th, figuring this day was well past the 5-7 day delivery window for the modem. I also scheduled the cancellation of my Rogers cable and internet for that day. So the 16th comes and still no modem, but the satellite guy comes and installs a satellite dish and 3 satellite boxes in the house (about 4 hours and that is with me helping run some of the cables).

The install guy was actually pretty nice, so I wonâ€™t bash him too much. When he is done installing it, he calls it in and then puts me on the phone with somebody from Bell ExpressVu who is now telling me I have to pick which programming I want and what packages. So I tell her that I already went over this with the sales guy originally and she says in order to set up the programming, I have to make these selections.

So I go through this pamphlet quickly and select some services, not giving me all the channels that the sales guy was telling me I was getting. After I give her my selections, I hear her start adding it up and she gives me a total dollar amount of what just television is gonna cost me a month.

I try to explain to her that I had already discussed price with the salesperson and I was getting it in a bundle, but it seemed like I had to just go along with what she was saying or they just wonâ€™t give you any programming, so I said sure. I figured I should be able to work it out with Bell customer service since my sales phone call was recorded to ensure quality.

So Rogers cancels my cable and internet right on cue and I had no internet last night. I call this morning to Bellâ€™s customer service to find out where my modem is. They put me onto their Sympatico people because it is an internet thing. They in turn tell me they have no customer ID under my name or address and no work order pending to install internet service.

I explain that I am supposed to be getting a wireless modem (Wi-max) and so they call over to that department and then tell me that the Wi-max service is not available in my area, so what probably happened is that they just cancelled the order. I asked her why they wouldnâ€™t have called me to tell me that and she told me because I donâ€™t have a Bell phone line, they would have used a fictitious phone number to create the account and then just cancelled it when they couldnâ€™t provide the service. But this was all just speculation on her part because they couldnâ€™t even track the fact that I ever even placed an order (thatâ€™s brutal).

So Iâ€™m getting ticked and they think, well, we can just solve this problem by sending a technician by your house in 8 days to hook up a phone line and then you can order our DSL service. I tell her I have been a customer for less than a day and I already am regretting it, so I go up the line to a supervisor who is trained to just empathize with you and just get you to agree to get their service. The more he said, â€œoh yes, sir, I understand, this is horrible, letâ€™s just get you set up on a work order to get your phone line hooked up with Bell,â€ the more I felt like yelling. Finally I snapped and told him to get all of this Bell crap out of my house. Iâ€™m going back to Rogers.

He tried one more time to get me to set up an appointment, but it was too late. I was so ticked that the original sales person had lied to me and made a bunch of promises he knew Bell couldnâ€™t keep just to get me signed up that I was fuming. So I tell them to cancel everything.

They tell me they canâ€™t do that. I have to talk to their ExpressVu people to cancel that (funny, the guy sold it to me as all one package, but you have to deal with 3 different companies for customer service). So they transfer me over to ExpressVu, where I explain to the first guy why Iâ€™m ticked and want to cancel.

He transfers me to their â€˜retention departmentâ€™ and now Iâ€™m thinking, hey maybe they will give me some sort of good deal. Once again, it is some jackass who thinks, ah, who cares if you are without internet for a couple of weeks, all will be good if you just get Bellâ€™s service, no deals no nothing, but a rather smug attitude.

I told him to cancel the ExpressVu and to not even dream of charging me a cancellation fee. The arrangements were made under false pretences because the salesperson lied to me. I must have sounded pretty ticked because he didnâ€™t even argue. He just said he would send me 3 postage-paid boxes to return the receivers in.

Then, as I was hanging up the phone, the picture went black on the TV screen and the phone number to order service popped up. It took him less than 30 seconds to shut off my satellite.

So I call Rogers, grovelling like a scolded dog to be taken back. The guy was great, one person, all three services. He tried his best to give me back what I originally had, but he could not get me back my sweet winback deal where I had free rental of the HD PVR and a digital cable box for as long as I was a Rogers customer.

So there goes $30 a month I was saving, but he was able to give me some TV and internet deals that are usually only for new customers. Needless to say, it costs still more than before, but the customer service was so good I almost donâ€™t mind.

That phone call took about an hour and a half, because he was trying to get me the exact services I had before, but was running into some issues with the computer accepting it. But while I was talking with him, I was taking down all the Bell stuff and reconnecting the Rogers boxes (which I hadnâ€™t taken back yet, thank goodness). And within 10 minutes of hanging up the phone, all my Rogers was stuff was back online, including the internet with the same email address and everything. I love Rogers.

I gave my wife the full authority to give me a whack in the back of the head if I ever even think about getting anything from Bell again. They are the most frustrating company to deal with. They shouldnâ€™t sell bundled packages if they canâ€™t bundle their customer service.

Man, I should have known better. I remember telling the first salesperson before I hung up on him the second time that I wasnâ€™t even a customer of theirs yet and their customer service was pissing me off. I was blinded by the idea of getting flashy new technology. I hate being a geek some days.

So in total Bell has screwed me out of the following:

about 4 hours of my life on the phone with them

about 4 hours following the installer around and helping him

about 1.5 hours on the phone setting things right with Rogers

(and because of work I know that an hour of my life is worth around $55, 9.5 x 55 = $522.50)

$99 plus tax for the satellite install that I had to pay to the installer and Bell was supposed to credit my account back on my first bill, but there ainâ€™t gonna be no first bill.

Plus $30/ month for life of free rental fees that I got screwed out of because they tricked me into cancelling my Rogers accounts.

So if the average lifespan for a male is 77 years ((77Ã—12)-(33Ã—12)) (30) = $15,840.

I should take them to small claims court just for kicks. I wouldnâ€™t need a lawyer and to dispute it, they would most likely have to bring that original salesperson as a witness. Then I would have his ID so I could charge him criminally for fraudâ€¦

Anyways, if you actually read all that, thanks for listening to me vent, and no, you canâ€™t take me to small claims court for the hour of your life lost reading.

What can they do to fix this?

No more cold call sales. If I want to switch, I’ll call you.

Customer service for all Bell services with one customer service contact. If you are going to bundle your services, then bundle your customer service.

Don’t have someone discuss pricing with the client after installation, when a salesperson already gave a price for a service that was agreed upon.

One Bill Payment. We are fighting with Bell, they say we owe them over $1,100.

The kick is we have all of our receipts, the ones from our bank and the “thank you payment received.” Bell states that our bank took back the money, months after payments have been made.

Hours back and forth to the Bell Store and our bank, hours on the phone. Our bank says, and writes a letter to say that all monies have been paid to Bell and the bank has not retrieved any monies back.

Even though we do not find this funny in the slightest, the bank seems to see some humor. How can Bell be so stupid as to believe that the bank can actually retrieve money months after the fact! The bank says it’s ridiculous.

Meanwhile, we’re slated for disruption of services next week if we do not come up with another $1,100+. I have to wonder if Bell does cut us off, when in fact we are paid as per our contract, does this put Bell in a position where it would release us from our obligations with Bell?

We have 2 phones on a 3 year deal…One phone is almost 2 years in, the other just one?

We’ve had it with Bell. They do not listen to customers. You are forced to talk to someone in India who follows a script and is unable to speak or communicate with you, other than the script that is in front of them.

Bell Canada sucks big time and we need to find a way to be able to bill Bell back for our time away from our families, spent on hold or talking to Bell, not to mention gas, wear and tear of our vehicles, letters from banks, confirming what has already been told to Bell…and so on!

There must be a lawyer out there that can start a Class Action on our behalf.

Now they say we owe approx $4,000. Someone else has been paying our account??????

We’ve had several invoices telling us we owe anywhere from $54 to $1,100, then $750, then $1,400, to now almost $4,000 — and this has been since my last report here. They’re going back to November of 2006. Can they do this?

I am at a loss where to go. Needless to say, they’ve cut all of our services and now I am using a public library to write this.